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your mind with ripples

Hello, Everyone,

Your Brain is not the Only Part of Your Mind with Ripples

That everything is included within your mind is the essence of mind. To experience this is to have religious feeling. Even though waves arise, the essence of your mind is pure; it is just like clear water with a few waves. Actually water always has waves. Waves are the practice of the water. To speak of waves apart from water or water apart from waves is a delusion. Water and waves are one. Big mind and small mind are one. When you understand your mind in this way, you have some security in your feeling. As your mind does not expect anything from outside, it is always filled. A mind with waves in it is not a disturbed mind, but actually an amplified one. Whatever you experience is an expression of big mind.

The activity of big mind is to amplify itself through various experiences. In one sense our experiences coming one by one are always fresh and new, but in another sense they are nothing but a continuous or repeated unfolding of the one big mind.

-Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Min

I found it very gratifying to find out (yet again, I keep forgetting!) that "waves ARE the practice of the water." It basically means for me that when I sit or don't sit, whatever is going on in my heart or head is O.K. I don't need to listen to it if it's reruns from the past or speculation about the future. Just as my heart beats without me controlling it, thoughts can come and go and they do go, good and bad, if I don't try to control them. It is only when I dwell on things that they become a super big issue and my life becomes difficult. So, right this moment, everything is good!

Re: your mind with ripples

Thank you, Lora, for a lovely post from Suzuki Roshi.

Maybe most folks, in day to day life, see only the waves of small thoughts and emotions, and think the waves are bigger and more substantial than they are. They get lost in the waves, swept away by the currents and whirlpools of passing ideas and desires, judgments and reactions. Our Buddhist Practice lets us know that waves come and go, arise from momentary conditions and are always passing.

When many of us experience thought waves, we think the wave is unavoidably real and forgot that waves are ever passing. So, when we experience a wave of anger, for example, we may think that the anger wave is all there is, and that we must be angry. The anger wave fills all our sight, and it is all we can see of the world ... the horizon is hidden. We do not see it as but a passing wave responding to temporary conditions. When we experience greedy waves, we may think that our happiness depends on whatever we long for. We taste happy waves, so we want the condition to stay and fear its loss ... not knowing the joy of the calm and deep ocean itself.

Also, when we are sitting in an emotional or idea filled storm at sea, where wind and waves of fear and disturbance and imbalance knock us hard, we may not realize how much we are making that storm ourselves! When the mind is calm, waves settle ... the waters quiet ... balance is restored. When the mind is filled with disturbance, the water becomes disturbed ... giant waves rise up from all sides and drag us away. We make the waves rise.

And, most wonderfully about this storm, it is not a matter of inner or outer conditions! One could be sitting in a worldly storm at sea, lost in the middle of the actual Atlantic Ocean, in a leaky boat with a broken rudder and snapped mast, swept on all sides by a hurricane ... and if one sits a moment of Zazen amid those conditions (you had better tie yourself down!), the True Storm becomes quiet though the worldly storm might drag you under.

I usually like to talk about "clouds of thought and emotion" amid a "clear blue sky" ... but it is nice to talk about waves. As Suzuki Roshi says, waves are as natural to the sea as clouds to the sky. Do not reject one for the other, even as you perceive each for its own. So, waves are just the sea, clouds are just the sky ... do not seek to break up sea or sky. An ocean without waves would be frozen, lifeless. A sky without clouds would be dull, unchanging.

Re: your mind with ripples

sometimes i think this practice allows us to see things from a very big angle... to see the whole picture so to speak.
things are as they are at the moment...

i sometimes like to compare it to a candle flame. it is always moving always changing, the shape, the color, the smoke, the intensity. it is just like our lives, each moment is just this moment, it will never be just like that again.
the flame is always moving yet it stays at the same place.... it is just a flame. but it is built up by so many things... it happens on so many levels. physical, chemical, visual, olfactory ( smell ), sensation ( heat ), and many other things... but it is still a flame... seeing it as just a flame yet knowing that it is so deep like all things.
and than just dropping all this and just seeing what is... the flame the candle, the candle stand, the room, the world, and knowing that they are all just like the flame and just like us.

i find it hard to explain in words what i wanted to say... it seems so wrong what i said and that i missed the point of what i wanted to says...
but these are just words, the only way to really explain it all is to practice and sit zazen.

Re: your mind with ripples

forgive me if i have wasted your time.

Since we're talking about wasting time. Is time there to be wasted? Can we waste it? Who's time anyway? Have you got the time? No I don't mean I want to know what time it is. I mean have you got the time?

To some, time is precious. Where can I accumulate time? I mean I would like to get some if it's precious, but I can't seem to find any. What price do you think I could get for a big chunk of time? I guess it depends on the quality of the time. Some time is worth more perhaps. I should probably find a catalog or something. Do they sell time? I'm sure they do. Somewhere. I guess I'll just have to settle with having no time right now. Yes. I have no time. No time for the washing, the cooking, the cleaning. Sparetime, I have none of that either.

So I got out a big cardboard divider and tried to seperate my room into different chunks of time. Didn't quite work. I didn't know how I could carry it to the bank. That's my dillema right now. How can I get this time to the Bank. uhhhhh....

Re: your mind with ripples

Originally Posted by Jundo

I usually like to talk about "clouds of thought and emotion" amid a "clear blue sky" ... but it is nice to talk about waves. As Suzuki Roshi says, waves are as natural to the sea as clouds to the sky. Do not reject one for the other, even as you perceive each for its own. So, waves are just the sea, clouds are just the sky ... do not seek to break up sea or sky. An ocean without waves would be frozen, lifeless. A sky without clouds would be dull, unchanging.

Let me also drop in why I, personally, prefer the empty "sky" as my chosen metaphor rather than the "sea" or "ocean". It is because, for many folks, the sea or ocean clearly brings to mind an object, and it brings images of some great "Oneness" or "Cosmic Consciousness" that we are to merge with. Here is an example of such a description I stumbled on today from Huang Po ...

All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measure, names, traces and comparisons.

That's fine, but it is a bit dangerous to our practice because it brings to mind a spirit, or Brahma, or Oneness, or the like.

In contrast, the sky is more an emptiness which, because it is empty, we need not call a thing or even "one". It is so all encompassing, so whole, that we do not even need to call it a "whole". By calling it "perfect", we limit its qualities. By describing it as "complete", we make it small in image. By insisting it is "pure". we do not see how it swallows purities and the worst filth the mind can imagine. (Perhaps it is just a personal issue with words )

It may sound like a nonsense distinction, but it can be vitally important to our Practice. I will talk about it a bit more tonight when we discuss "emptiness" (??nyat?) on the "Sit-a-Long".

Re: your mind with ripples

An analogy came to me, and if it seems off-track, let me know. Perhaps spending so much time in my car I'm becoming 'one' with the car--not sure!

Natural stated of mind, when still, is idling in neutral. All body systems, breathing, etc continue, but there is stillness. When thoughts arise--system goes into gear. Thoughts of past in reverse gear, thoughts of present in low gear and thoughts of future in high gear. Regardless of which, if following the thoughts then the car/mind *goes* whereever the thought goes, and leaves behind where 'I' am. The present is abandoned by a runaway thought/vehicle. Only when put back in neutral, can I come back to one piece in stillness.

The neutral seems to be to be the 'soft, flexible' mind--a car in neutral can be pushed as needed in any direction, and the flexible mind moves as needed with the changing surroundings, without becoming attached to a destination, and either running over or into something in the process.

Not nearly as pretty as the nature-based analogies, I admit. But it makes sense to this beginner for now.

Re: your mind with ripples

Originally Posted by will

forgive me if i have wasted your time.

Since we're talking about wasting time. Is time there to be wasted? Can we waste it? Who's time anyway? Have you got the time? No I don't mean I want to know what time it is. I mean have you got the time?

To some, time is precious. Where can I accumulate time? I mean I would like to get some if it's precious, but I can't seem to find any. What price do you think I could get for a big chunk of time? I guess it depends on the quality of the time. Some time is worth more perhaps. I should probably find a catalog or something. Do they sell time? I'm sure they do. Somewhere. I guess I'll just have to settle with having no time right now. Yes. I have no time. No time for the washing, the cooking, the cleaning. Sparetime, I have none of that either.

So I got out a big cardboard divider and tried to seperate my room into different chunks of time. Didn't quite work. I didn't know how I could carry it to the bank. That's my dillema right now. How can I get this time to the Bank. uhhhhh....

Re: your mind with ripples

Thank you, Jundo and thank you all for your input.

Someone told me that the minute one puts a name on something it becomes a concept and the second it's a concept it's a creation of our little mind and our little minds immediately grasp onto that, we no longer see what is right this second but have a memory of it, (do I really taste the orange or do I "remember" that it's an orange and so miss out on this very moment) so I see what you mean, Jundo, when you talk about the water being "limited".

Re: your mind with ripples

Hi, Filur,

I was re-reading posts and feel the need to expand on my previous comment, "whatever". At the time of writing it I knew what tone I was using but in seeing it again it may come of as sulky, insulting or just plain nasty! None of the above was intended!
It simply meant "go ahead".
I must remember that people are'nt reading my tone, body language or even laughter, chuckles etc.
Good luck with your essay.

Re: your mind with ripples

Originally Posted by lora

Hi, Filur,

I was re-reading posts and feel the need to expand on my previous comment, "whatever". At the time of writing it I knew what tone I was using but in seeing it again it may come of as sulky, insulting or just plain nasty! None of the above was intended!
It simply meant "go ahead".
I must remember that people are'nt reading my tone, body language or even laughter, chuckles etc.
Good luck with your essay.

Many blessings,
lora

Hi.
No problem. we're all a happy bunch here.
And ask your self, what is "my tone, body language or even laughter, chuckles etc" :mrgreen:
And as i said, i'd gladly share with you all that has been reproduced.
wait a minute, i already am...
But there's a small problem, its probably going to be written in swedish...

And for the record, my name is Tb its short för torbjörn (thats "Thorbear" for the englishspeakingempaired... 8) and Jundo finally learned it! )